Clumsy on every level.

Bulletproof is both offensive and depressing, from its sociopathic mix of graphic violence and slapstick to its severe career blighting of the once-formidable Ernest Dickerson. [6 Sept 1996, p.3D]

That sound you hear is from jet engines gassing up, about to zoom Underclassman to DVD-ville.

The word on Rollerball is "troubled," though troubled is what you call a high school junior with 50 snakes under his bed. Catastrophe is more like it.

Vanilla Ice was fairly amusing striking terror into Debbie Gibson when they were perversely cast as co-presenters on the last Grammy telecast. On the big screen, though, he all but exudes irreversible brain damage, as if he's taken too many noggin spills off a motorcycle. [25 Oct 1991, p.4D]

Not only is it plodding and completely predictable, the carnage is rendered slowly and quasi-reverentially, making the whole brutal experience come off like torture porn.

This film is so superficial and shifts so jarringly in tone that nothing feels authentic -- not Bacon's hard-working husband and father, nor his maniacal vengeance seeker.

You keep waiting for there to be more, but there never is -- other than the fact that it all gets gorier and uglier as the dyspeptic look on Jones' face progresses from a four- to a six-a-day scotch-and-peppermint schnapps hangover.

But those looking for enlightenment on this boring road trip better bring along a flashlight. The sex change merely allows Erika Eleniak, who won more respect from her critters as Elly May in The Beverly Hillbillies than she does from the male animals here, to doff her duds as often as she tries to escape. Running tampon gags are never a good sign. [26 Apr 1994, p.8D]

Memorable for being one of the most obnoxious animated movies of recent years.

This may be the most laugh-free comedy of the year.

A moviegoer's nightmare. The story is incoherent, inane and interminable.

MTV addicts may want to check out Shore, whose sound effects (akin to electrical interference) amuse for maybe five minutes. Otherwise, Encino Man is even worse than Medicine Man, which came from the same studio. In a just society, both of them would go the way of Atlantis Man. [22 May 1992, p.12D]

A race-car drama full of flashy but empty images and a soundtrack that makes you feel as if you're being shaken on a motel rumblebed.

At least the original never stooped to overly graphic violence. This time, the filmmakers drench the toy-factory finale with gore galore. [09 Nov 1990, p.4D]

This unbearable cross-generational fantasy, with Coreys Haim and Feldman, has one bit that sums up its overall ineptitude. It's a romantic interlude featuring the great Sinatra standard Young at Heart; instead of the 1954 hit version on Capitol, the filmmakers use the 1962 Reprise remake - photographed on a revolving turntable (and with the wrong label) as a 78! A 78 in the era of Gene Pitney? - what preschool did the filmmakers graduate from, anyway? [8 Sept 1989, p.3D]

It tries to pass itself off as a film about feistiness, forgiveness and the bonds of motherhood. Instead, it deals lightly and inappropriately with promiscuity, alcoholism, drug abuse, grief and child molestation. Georgia Rule doesn't make you feel good; it makes you queasy.

So imperfect that it may qualify as one of the summer's worst movies.

Even by teen gross-out movie standards Van Wilder makes "Sorority Boys" look like "Some Like It Hot."

A deadly dull and overly familiar movie about summoning ghosts that draws upon nearly every horror movie cliché.

To crystallize its fundamental flaw, here's a movie about Manhattan that takes 75 minutes just to get to Manhattan - followed by another 15 that could just as easily have been shot (and possibly were) in some East Topeka alley. [31 July 1989, p.4D]

This may be the most preposterous movie of the year. It is certainly the most ridiculous movie starring an Oscar-winning actor.

This is the worst kind of movie, one that insults its audience by purporting to condemn violence while simultaneously reveling in it.

Mannequin Two desperately wants to be magical. But the spell it casts is one of idiocy. [21 May 1991, p.4D]

Chuck rhymes with bucks - the only possible reason to revive this poor excuse for a horror villain in Child's Play 3. [03 Sep 1991, p.5D]

Saw V is a terrible combination: grisly and tedious. Let's just call it bloody dull.

The film tries to be stylish and slick, but is mostly just nasty and blood-drenched. Piven, so funny in other film roles and on TV's "Entourage," overdoes it here, and extended scenes of his debauchery grow excessive and thuddingly dull.

Not just stupid, but brain dead.

Sitting through New Year's Eve is like attending a crowded party filled with pretty people who have nothing to say.

A baseball nostalgia piece all weirded-out by flashes of supernatural horror, this early-'60s remembrance is like sitting through a double bill of Field of Dreams and The Goonies. [7 Apr 1993, p.8D]

That's what The Bounty Hunter has rustled up -- along with a listless rom-com, a feeble thriller and a supporting cast of clueless characters.

If they were going to make a movie with Phillips about a dead guy who comes back to life, why didn't they just make La Bamba II? [05 Apr 1990, p.6D]

Anemic. [30 October 1998, p.8E]

As an artsy but minimally bohemian type, Russo maintains her dignity, an extraordinary accomplishment.

Sniper offers slow-motion close-ups of bullet trajectories for action, plodding for nearly two hours. Berenger may wonder if Zane has the stuff to pull his trigger, but I prayed for someone to pull the plug. [29 Jan 1993, p.4D]

It's really not much fun - in fact it's painful - to watch an actor on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It almost doesn't matter if the psyche in question is imploding artificially - as in staged - or organically.

The unfunny jokes center on outhouses, vomit and flatulence. Gooding mugs, screeches, even hops up and down to no avail. Nothing can wring an ounce of comedy out of this sorry spectacle.

This ill-conceived sequel to 2011's entertaining Horrible Bosses is base, moronic, insulting and vulgar. It's also cringingly unfunny.

Fire Birds may actually be duller than Clint Eastwood's Firefox. It's doing a full-tilt boogie to 3 a.m. cable right now. [25 May 1990, p.4D]

What audiences should expect is a tone-deaf, superficial, charmless ensemble rom-com, focused on five attractive, but uninteresting, couples.

An embarrassing debacle...the rare movie that never seems to take off, but also never seems to end. It tries hard to titillate, but ends up making audiences want to avert their eyes.

Poor Rutger Hauer - the new decade apparently isn't his. This hearty trouper's latest, Blind Fury, is nobody's swell time at the multiplex. [30 Mar 1990, p.5D]

The filmmakers behind the "Saw" franchise must love to see a movie like Hostel: Part II. Compared to this Eli Roth fetish video, the "Saw" films are Oscar bait.

This is a fantastical faceplant, and though Elba tries his hardest, what could have been the tale of an iconic gunslinger is a big miss.

As forewarned, so avoid.

Wow, dudes. Pu-trid. (1989 February 20, p.4D)

One should approach Hocus Pocus as if it were one of those households that plunk toothbrushes instead of Snickers into your goody bag. Skip it.

The latest undead-soldier story carries on the franchise tradition of graphic violence and bad acting.

Except for some climactic gunplay in a zoo that looks suspiciously like a set, every plot thread is a retread - 500 layers deep. [18 May 1990, p.4D]

Bride Wars is about as funny as a cringingly awkward wedding toast.

May boast a star-studded cast but it’s a spectacular dud on every other level with tonal whiplash, a little casual racism played for jokes and a script seemingly pulled from Hallmark cards rejected for being too hokey.

Imagine a movie so broadly conceived that it was written, directed and all parts were played by Charo — billed in her '70s heyday of Love Boat gigs as the "Cuchi-Cuchi Girl." That's what you get here.

Fred is DOA, but he and the Diceman will kick up a storm at December's 10- worst time. [24 May 1991, p.7D]

Insidious: Chapter 2 appears to be the sum of the unusable parts from James Wan's recent haunted house feature "The Conjuring."

An unfortunate movie that does an embarrassing disservice to the decades-old property and is a frightful waste of all the talent involved.

Sarah Jessica Parker contributes next to nothing as a work/sack partner who ends up imperiled by a sadist fixated on Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs. The director/co-writer is Rowdy Herrington, who has now surpassed what was his most ludicrous claim to fame: Putting Brian Dennehy into a boxing ring with teen James Marshall in Gladiator. [17 Sept 1993, p.4D]

As if this drivel weren't bad enough, the ending blatantly threatens a sequel

And as nice as it is to see dishy Jennifer Connelly roller-skate down the store's aisles, the scene is just one more instance of obvious padding to push the running time to (just) past 80 minutes. [2 Apr 1991, p.6D]

Sandler mugs through a back-to-school daze. [13 February 1995, p.D1]

Eugene Levy should be stopped before he directs again. [9 March 1992, p.4D]

The movie was postponed from 1998 and shielded from critics. (They were ot allowed to see the movie before the opening, usually a bid sign.) [15 January 1999, Life, p.8E]

Only the makers of "Freddy Got Fingered" might crack a smile because it now has competition for worst movie of the year.

Not only is it an unfunny movie shrilly told, it probably is the most ill-timed and appallingly insulting movie in recent memory.

No comedy this vile should be brazenly foolish enough to give itself this title. [25 November 1998, p. 3D]

Antichrist is probably the most disturbing, bleak and self-indulgent film ever made.

Rascals is as painful as a grade-school play without your kid in it. The end-credit outtakes at least indicate Spheeris suffered through it as well. [05 Aug 1994, p.4D]

Shocking is the fact that three highly regarded actors -- Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke and Billy Bob Thornton -- chose to star in this dreadful film.

What snookered Slater (not to mention Donald Sutherland) into this film is a wonder, because there's not a genuine bone in it. Think the Bourne franchise meets the Bond franchise, without the wit or action.

In this Amityville, the performances are bad, the special effects ho-hum, and it's not even particularly scary.

Good actors seem plastic and plastic actors seem worse in a knockoff of every rocket-ship movie you've ever seen.

A tribute to a giant leap for mankind feels like a clumsy shuffle backward for animation.

White Noise is the celluloid equivalent of a bad cell phone connection.

Neither side is worth rooting for in this ridiculous blood feud, which features some of the year's most laughable dialogue.

This is a movie in which you rarely know where you are or who's doing what to the next person.

Disappointingly limp. [16 Oct 1992, p.7D]

Even as temporary visitors, the audience can feel IQ points slipping away.

Heavyweights is like staring into a void, a vacuum of pure nothingness that induces a kind of semi-coma as it virtually sucks the life out of the motion-picture medium. [17 Feb 1995, p.D3]

Should the desire to see a clever zombie movie strike, try the recent remake of "Dawn of the Dead" or last year's "28 Days."

A plot-twist whodunit that even Forrest Gump might crack, it's also a Hall of Fame howler from long-inactive Richard Rush, whose direction of 1967's Hell's Angels on Wheels now seems comparably placid. [19 Aug 1994, p.10D]

School for Scoundrels will only leave you scratching your head in bewilderment and might possibly shave off IQ points.

Indisputably the most violent film of the year and disputably the worst.

The best thing about the nod-inducing Death Warrant is a muscleheaded psycho called the Sandman. That figures, since you're likely to take a nap or two waiting for hero Jean-Claude Van Damme to stop taking his lumps and start busting heads. [17 Sep 1990, p.2D]

Poor Sharon Stone! Poor Sidney Lumet! [22 January 1999, Life, p.11E]

Perhaps Look Who's Leaking Now would be more apropos: Dirty diapers are replaced by pooch puddles in this second sequel. [5 Nov 1993, p.4D]

Drawn out and dishonest in equal measure, Sam fights it out with "The Majestic" for the title of worst "important" movie of the year.

Besides displaying a tin ear for dialogue, King stoops to such conventions as having the sleepwalkers vulnerable to just one thing - cat scratches. [13 Apr 1992, p.6D]

For a comedian (Allen) who often seems to be calling it in, he's more lackluster than usual. Curtis is a bigger disappointment, especially after "Freaky Friday," in which she was funny, smart and cheeky.

At a certain point, Bean goes beyond awful to surreally awful, like the rug Burt Reynolds sports in a cameo. The last-ditch plunge into pathos does nothing to redeem the feeling. Let's hope no sequel is in the offing. The only thing worse than Bean would be a hill of Beans. [07Nov1997 Pg08.D]

Clean up the language, and this little roach of a movie could play the bottom half of a double bill with Rowan and Martin's “The Maltese Bippy.” [26 March 1999, Life, p.9E]

Whatever knockabout Gallic charm the original might have had - and, starring Gerard Depardieu, it must have had some - has been sucked out of Three Fugitives. What's left is a vacuum-packed factory product with a few arresting touches, including some surprisingly violent slapstick and a sullen young heroine who looks like a preschool Isabelle Adjani.

Despite its appealing stars, The Ugly Truth is a charmless romantic comedy.

No one put in any creative overtime on this Shift, the 16th Stephen King story made into a film. About as clever as it gets is calling the mill owner Bachman - King's pseudonym. [29 Oct 1990, p.4D]

In most cases, doggedly pursuing a dream is laudable. But if it does nothing else, The Astronaut Farmer demonstrates that not every dream is worth pursuing. At least not the belabored one of a narcissistic crackpot masquerading as an admirable dreamer.

A movie about a teen party gone horribly wrong, would be every parent's worst nightmare if it weren't so inane.

Hollywood, never one to let a retro idea die, has entrusted the premise to Carlo Carlei, a young Italian filmmaker whose stylistical flourishes in 1992's Flight of the Innocent seem doubly grotesque when employed toward such flea-laden material. [02 Jun 1995, p.2D]

Here's a late-August dog-days atrocity from the "aren't farts funny?" school of filmmaking.

The best acting in Mr. Magoo actually comes courtesy of his resourceful bulldog, Angus. As pooches go, he has a better pedigree than this dog of a flick. [23 Dec 1997, p.3D]

That a group of creative people chose to direct their energies on this repulsive spectacle simply provokes disgust.